


Here's the Tender Coming - Director's Cut

by Sharpiefan



Category: Age of Sail - Fandom
Genre: Fanvids, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 12:49:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharpiefan/pseuds/Sharpiefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The press-gang was a universally dreaded, although legal, method of recruiting for the Navy during the Age of Sail. The tender of the song's title was the vessel such pressed men were sent to before being assigned to ships needing men. This is a remake of my first vid, and a tribute to the men of the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here's the Tender Coming - Director's Cut

**Author's Note:**

> I went back and redid my first vid, talking out some of the weirder wipes and generally making it a better thing. Most of the sequences are the same, some have changed or been replaced.
> 
> This is the definitive version of this vid.
> 
> I do not own any rights to the source material nor do I make any profits from it.

[Here's the Tender Coming - new and improved!](http://vimeo.com/54195405) from [Sharpie](http://vimeo.com/sharpiefan) on [Vimeo](http://vimeo.com).

**Some background info, specifically for those new to the Age of Sail** There is a popular misconception - both now and in the popular press at the time - that men were pressed from hearth and home. There is more than one reference to men being pressed from the door of the church on their wedding day, in the form of contemporary prints railing against the evils of the press-gang. (I am unaware of whether there were any songs about such happenings, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are at least references to such songs.)

This is nonsense because such men would have to be trained, and it usually took at least a year for a man to 'learn the ropes' and know enough to be rated as an ordinary seamen. Legally, press-gangs were limited to 'those who use the sea' although such use could be tenuous - fishermen, ferrymen, smugglers, merchant seamen and others were all liable to be pressed. Certain men, such as Thames watermen, were issued 'Protections' which legal documents that were supposed to prevent their owners being taken up by the Press.

When war broke out between England and Revolutionary France in 1793, and again in 1803 after the Peace of Amiens, a 'hot press' was authorised and men's Protections were suspended for a time while the Navy tried to build up numbers to be able to fit out and man the several ships 'laid up in ordinary' against a time of war. it is such a press-gang shown in some of the clips to this video (admittedly, in the background, behind Mr Midshipman Hornblower). Press-gangs were usually accompanied by Marines or soldiers to prevent those men taken from escaping before they were brought to the tender.


End file.
